PROBLEM SET – STAT 101 – SARMIENTO

1.) Skewed left. Sketch a histogram for a distribution that is skewed to the left. Suppose that you and your friends emptied your pockets
of coins and recorded the year marked on each coin. The distribution of dates would be skewed to the left. Explain why.

2.) Yankee money. The table below gives the salaries of the players on the New York Yankees baseball team as of the opening day of
the 2007 season. Make a histogram of these data. Is the distribution roughly symmetric, skewed to the right, or skewed to the left?
Explain.

3.) What’s the average? The Census BureauWeb site gives several choices for “average income” in its historical income data. In 2006,
the median income of American households was $48,201. The mean household income was $66,570. The median income of families
was $58,407, and the mean family income was $77,315. The Census Bureau says, “Households consist of all people who occupy a
housing unit. The term ‘family’ refers to a group of two or more people related by birth, marriage, or adoption who reside together.”
Explain carefully why mean incomes are higher than median incomes and why family incomes are higher than household incomes.

4.) The richest 1%. The distribution of individual incomes in the United States is strongly skewed to the right. In 2004, the mean and
median incomes of the top 1% of Americans were $315,000 and $1,259,700. Which of these numbers is the mean and which is the
median? Explain your reasoning.

5.) Exports. The figure below compares the value of exports (in billions of dollars) in 2002 from the world’s leading exporters: Germany,
Japan, and the United States.
a. Explain why this is not an accurate graph.
b. Make an accurate graph to compare the exports of these nations.

6.) Raising Pay. The teachers’ union and the school board are negotiating the form of next year’s increase in the salary schedule.
Suppose that every teacher is given a flat 5% raise
a. How much will the mean salary increase? The median salary?
b. Will the standard deviation of the salaries increase? Explain.